With the acquisition of Affinity, Canva should be able to better compete with Adobe’s creative tools

Canvasthe leading Australian design and visual communications startup, today announced its acquisition Convergence (formerly Serif), a creative tools company based in the United Kingdom Bloomberg reported The deal was worth several hundred million pounds (about $380 million USD), and the company confirmed to TechCrunch that the number was accurate.

Canva typically targets beginners with its products, but company co-founder Cliff Obrecht sees the acquisition as opening the door to more advanced users. “While our last decade at Canva has focused heavily on the 99% of knowledge workers with no design training, truly empowering the design world includes empowering professional designers as well,” he wrote. In a blog post Announcement of the deal. “By joining forces with Affinity, we are excited to unlock a full range of designers at every level and stage of the design journey.”

With Affinity, the company can also better compete with Adobe, especially Adobe Express, says Ray Wang, founder and principal analyst at Constellation Research. “Canva needed products with more sophisticated capabilities to compete with Adobe,” Wang told TechCrunch. “Their core offerings weren’t as robust as Adobe Express. Affinity has a really easy-to-use image editor. The page layout is also very easy to use. Plus, the two company cultures are a good fit,” he said.

As you can imagine, both acquisition parties were “excited” and “delighted” with the deal, and why couldn’t they just exchange a bunch of money to join forces? in Blog post On Affinity’s website, CEO Ashley Hewson tried to allay customers’ concerns about the change. “We know that those of you who have put your trust in Affinity, some since we launched our first Mac app, will have questions about what this means for the future of our products,” he wrote in the post.

But he believes (along with every CEO of every company ever acquired) that they can do much more with Canva’s much greater resources than they could on their own. “In Canva, we have found a kindred spirit who can help us take Affinity to new levels. Their additional resources will mean we are able to deliver much more, much faster,” he wrote.

In 2021, when valuations were soaring, Canva reached the lofty heights of $40 billion. However, in a recent secondary stock sale, the company retreated somewhat, although the valuation remains high With a value of $26 billion.

It certainly leaves them more than enough value on the table to make purchases like this. Thanks to Affinity, Canva is gaining 3 million users worldwide as well as 90 employees who will join the company. The deal has already been officially closed.